Pallets in a forwarder’s warehouse
A pallet is a footprint and a pallet position is a billing unit, and treating them as one number is where warehouse revenue quietly leaks. Plus the wood-packaging rules that stop the shipment, not just the pallet.
In a warehouse a pallet is two things at once. It is a load carrier with a fixed footprint, which decides how much fits in a container. And it is a billing unit — the pallet position — which decides what the customer is charged for storage. The two are not the same measurement, and confusing them is how storage revenue leaks. For cargo crossing a US border the pallet is also a regulated article: untreated or badly marked wood packaging stops the shipment, not just the pallet.
A pallet position is not a pallet
A pallet is a deck. A pallet position is a defined volume of rack or floor that you rent to a customer for a period. They coincide only when the load is inside the footprint and under the height the position allows. Once cargo overhangs the deck, or is built taller than the beam spacing, one physical pallet occupies two positions and should be billed as two — which only happens if the receiving measurement was taken and recorded, not eyeballed.
The second distinction is between handling and storage. Handling is a per-movement charge: the pallet comes in, the pallet goes out. Storage is a per-period charge on the position it occupied while it waited. A rate card that quotes one “pallet rate” without saying which is being sold produces an argument at the first month end. The in-and-out model has its own vocabulary and its own accounting, covered in pallet in, pallet out.
The footprints, and why they are not interchangeable
| Pallet | Footprint | Floor area | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPAL Euro pallet | 800 × 1,200 mm | 0.96 m² | Height 144 mm, weight approx. 25 kg, safe working load 1,500 kg. When laden pallets are stacked on a solid, even surface the bottom pallet must not carry more than 5,500 kg |
| North American 48 × 40 in | 1,219 × 1,016 mm | 1.24 m² | The footprint most US grocery and retail supply chains standardised on |
The arithmetic matters more than it looks. A 48 × 40 pallet takes about 29 per cent more floor than a Euro pallet, but on most rate cards both are simply “a pallet”. Price a European inbound flow and a domestic flow at the same per-pallet storage rate and you are giving away nearly a third of the space on one of them. The same applies in the container: how many fit is a function of the internal width of the specific box and the loading pattern, not of a number anyone can quote in the abstract.
ISPM 15: the mark that stops the shipment
Wood packaging material — pallets, crates, dunnage, blocking and bracing — entering or transiting the United States must be pest-free, debarked, heat-treated or fumigated, and marked with the ISPM 15 logo. The mark carries the IPPC symbol, a two-letter country code, a unique facility number and the treatment code, HT for heat treatment or MB for methyl bromide.
Two carve-outs matter operationally. Wood packaging made from wood originating in Canada or the continental United States is exempt from treatment and marking on US import, provided the shipping documents state that the unmarked wood packaging was produced in and from US and/or Canadian wood — the exemption does not cover Hawaii or the US territories. And the manufactured materials APHIS does not regulate at all carry no marking obligation: plywood, oriented strand board, particleboard, hardboard, laminated and parallel strand lumber, plastic pallets, metal frames and inflated dunnage.
The hyphen is now enforced again. ISPM 15 requires a hyphen separating the country code from the producer code. APHIS and CBP suspended action on shipments failing only on the missing hyphen from March 2025; that suspension ended on 31 December 2025 and enforcement resumed on 1 January 2026. A mark that would have passed in 2025 on that single point will not now.
When an agricultural inspector finds non-compliant wood packaging, an Emergency Action Notification is issued and the shipment must be dealt with — safeguarded, for example by tarping or a knock-down fumigation, destroyed under APHIS supervision, or re-exported. Note what is not on that list: swapping the pallet at the warehouse afterwards. The finding attaches to the shipment at the port, and the cargo does not move until it is resolved.
Two practical consequences for a forwarder. First, a customer’s own pallets are the customer’s compliance risk but your operational problem, so the mark is worth photographing at receipt. Second, if your warehouse re-palletises export cargo, the pallets you supply are the ones that will be inspected at the far end.
What goes wrong
- Nobody measured at receipt. Dimensions taken later are estimates, and estimates lose storage disputes.
- Overhang billed as one position. The load hangs over the deck, blocks the adjacent slot, and is invoiced as a single pallet for months.
- Free time counted from the wrong event. Storage days should run from the receipt date on the warehouse receipt, not from when someone got round to entering it.
- Mixed footprints on one rate card. Euro and 48 × 40 pallets priced identically, on a customer whose inbound is mostly the larger one.
- Repacked cargo that lost its identity. Consolidating three customers’ cartons onto one pallet without recording which pieces went where turns a later short-shipment claim into guesswork.
- An unmarked export pallet on a lane that needs the mark. Discovered at destination, weeks later, when the remedy is expensive and the customer is yours. North American wood moving into the United States is exempt if the documents say so; the same pallet going to a third country generally is not.
How software handles it
What a forwarder’s warehouse actually needs is narrow: capture the measurement once, at receipt, and let everything downstream derive from it. Linbis records pieces, pallets and containers as nesting units with correct rollups and computes volume and chargeable weight the moment dimensions are captured; cargo on hand is a live register with ageing, and storage time flows into charges on the file so the days a pallet sits become billable lines rather than a month-end reconstruction. The receipt itself is produced as a warehouse receipt document from the file, and loose cargo built into a container rolls into the freight file without re-typing. That surface is described on warehouse management for forwarders, and the receipt document itself in creating a warehouse receipt.
Questions operators ask
What is a pallet in warehouse terms?
A flat load carrier that lets a forklift move a unitised load in one lift. In a warehouse the word is also used for the billing unit — the pallet position — which is a defined volume of rack or floor, not the deck itself.
What size is a standard pallet?
There is no single global standard. The EPAL Euro pallet is 800 × 1,200 mm, 144 mm high, about 25 kg, with a safe working load of 1,500 kg. North America mostly uses 48 × 40 inches, or 1,219 × 1,016 mm. Other regional footprints exist; assume nothing from a rate card that just says “pallet”.
What is palletisation in a warehouse?
Building loose cartons into a unitised load on a pallet so it can be moved, racked and counted as one handling unit. In a forwarder’s warehouse it is usually done at receipt or before export loading, and it is a billable handling service, not a free courtesy.
Do pallets need to be ISPM 15 marked for domestic moves?
The requirement applies to wood packaging entering or transiting the United States, and wood originating in Canada or the continental United States is exempt from it on US import provided the documents say so — so a US or Canadian pallet moving domestically or across that border is not the issue. A pallet that may later be exported beyond North America is, and segregating compliant from non-compliant stock after the fact is harder than buying marked pallets in the first place.
How should pallet storage be charged?
Separate the handling charge from the storage charge, define the position (footprint and height) that one billed pallet occupies, define when the clock starts, and bill overhang or over-height loads as the number of positions they actually block. All four have to be recorded at receipt or the invoice cannot be defended.
Isn’t a spreadsheet enough for a small warehouse?
It is, until the first storage dispute. A spreadsheet holds a number someone typed; it does not hold the dimensions captured at receipt, the ageing of cargo on hand, or the link between a pallet sitting on the floor and a line on next month’s invoice. Linbis starts at $150 per month including one user, with a free trial and no credit card.